As League players and EU LCS followers ourselves, Riot didn’t have to work particularly hard to get us excited about this one.
The idea was simple: build a time machine.
Or, failing that, find old computers, furniture, posters, CDs, merch and as many wonderfully outdated pieces of technology as we could get our hands on. We even brought a physical collector’s edition of League of Legends to the table.
Then we started rebuilding people’s pasts.
Yellowstar travelled to Madrid to join us in our studio, where we recreated his teenage bedroom and sent him straight back to his early League days.
For Araneae, we filled the room with pieces of his actual career. He brought jerseys from the teams he’d played for and lanyards he’d collected from events over the years, turning the set into a little archive of European League history.
Werlyb joined the trip too, while Froggen came to us through the most period-appropriate setup possible: online, via a very 2010s webcam, chatting to his friends on Skype.
And then there was Caliste.
While all these future legends were already grinding League, he was about three years old. So naturally, his contribution to our recreation of 2013 was a toddler playing “League” on a cardboard computer.
This one had a little bit of everything we love: nostalgia, production design, silly specific details, and the chance to make something alongside people who were actually there the first time around.
It also meant working once again with Margot Le Lorier, who we’ve been collaborating with for years and whose creative briefs have led to some of the most fun things we’ve made for the LEC.
Turns out time travel is mostly production design.